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Ctrl-Alt-Backspace is now disabled, to reduce issues experienced by users who accidentally trigger the key combo. Users who do want this function can enable it in their xorg.conf, or via the command dontzap --disable.

It's disabled in xorg 1.6, not by Ubuntu. This is something that is going to affect each and every distro. The latest Fedora betas have this, Arch Linux has this, Debian (one day) will likely have this too.

I set up a shuttle dual core atom box as a MythTv frontend with 8.10 (or maybe it was 9.04 beta, now that I think of it). It has an Intel graphics chipset, and I couldn't get it to use any of the settings I put in xorg.conf, and therefore couldn't get accelerated video decoding to work. I saw references to the problem online, downgraded to the previous version of Ubuntu, which paid attention to xorg.conf and fixed my problems.

The details are fuzzy now, because I forget things like that quickly, but it apparently has something to do with bullet-proof X.

On a side note, the newer version of Ubuntu worked perfectly with the onboard nic, but the older version had a borked kernel driver that failed to detect it properly, so I had to compile a driver from realTek (with no internet access) to get it to work.

Typical Linux bigot reply. Thanks. I assume you are referring to this known issue, which has nothing to do with my problem:

Users of Intel i845 or i865 video chipsets are unable to load X, getting an error message of "Fatal server error: Couldn't bind memory for BO front buffer". Users on these systems are advised to wait for a resolution to this bug before upgrading. 304871

I looked at the box again, and I reverted back to 7.10, probably so I would be able to leave it alone for a few years without the repos going away. That means I most likely tried 8.10 first and was running into something more like this.

Either way, the problem is fixed and you got your chance to make a smug comment containing absolutely no relevant information.

That site is something special: yes, if your xorg.conf is empty, it's not contributing anything. But that's completely different from xorg.conf being ignored (which it isn't, which is why he lists config file entries).

Yes, a whole bunch of intel related issues are either fixed or have been triaged with fixes coming. No thanks to the folks who write hit-and-run "reviews" complaining about how things are broken.

For what it's worth, the Ubuntu bug tracker is at http://bugs.launchpad.net/ . Additionally, here's a cross-section of currently relevant intel bugs:

And I was actually referring to the very next bullet point after the front buffer error:

Users of Intel video chipsets have reported performance regressions in Ubuntu 8.10 compared with previous releases. (252094) Although these performance issues have not been resolved by default in Ubuntu 9.04, a new experimental acceleration architecture option, DRI2/UXA, is available for Intel graphics users. Our testing has found this provides significant performance improvements for many users, but has also shown risk of severe stability problems, thus we are not yet providing to the general public. You can opt-in to enable this by running "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf", and adding Option "AccelMethod" "UXA" to the Device section of your xorg.conf. Users wishing to maximize stability should stay with the standard default acceleration method, "EXA".

Actually, it's pretty easy to hit that key combination when working in certain programs where you are already holding down CTRL+ALT as a shortcut. If you mistype something and hit backspace instinctually, your screen suddenly goes dark and you lose all of your work. Shortcuts exist as a speed enhancement in the first place, and typing accuracy arguably declines with increasing typing speed. So putting a keyboard shortcut on the backspace that kills X is a recipe for lost data, since people are likely to accidentally hit that key combination when using shortcuts. Even experienced users will be impacted by this from time to time, since they type the fastest.

Pros: a quick way to reset the x-server is useful 1) when playing with x.org settings and 2) lets me kill a program that is thrashing my hard drive so hard I can't open a console to kill it (shouldn't happen, but does occasionally) 3) quick way to log off when you're in a hurry 4) useful when your desktop environment crashes such that it isn't easy to shut down normally
Cons: You might hit the combo accidentally if you're mashing the keyboard with your face.

Pros outweigh the cons easily. If you think the con really is a big con, change the key combo to something like ALT+CTRL+META+SHIFT+BACKSPACE.

alt-sysrq-k will kill the xserver, and works on every ubuntu release since 6.06, and maybe earlier (not dead sure when they turned it on). If you're on a laptop, the combination may be different however: if printscreen is on a different key, try it instead of sysrq.

Well, monstermunch did that really well. There is no need to fix something that ain't broken. The Ctrl+Alt+Backspace combo is one of the most well known shortcuts on the X system and to just disable it all of a sudden does not make any sense. Also, the chances that you might hit these keys by mistake are pretty rare, at least I have never managed to do that so far (nearly three years of using Linux).

There are some really good reasons not to have a hot key anyone can press on your keyboard that kills all of your programs and exits the X server; I've been disabling zapping for over a decade for security reasons, and I'm really interested in knowing why people are so resistant to this.

More than once have I restarted X when some program doesn't release memory properly. Having the X session running for multiple days does wonders to your used memory, but after a quick ctrl-alt-backspace -> <up> -> enter, fixes those quite quickly. Also closing n-programs simultaneously is handy this way.

Also a while ago I had some problems with KDE:s shortcut keys which began opening programs on loop (imagine a couple-hundred terminal emulators). Didn't happen always but perhaps once a week. I would have had to hard-boot my laptop without ctrl-alt-backspace.

I have been using Linux for 7-8 years now and I have never pressed ctrl-alt-backspace accidentally.

Really? Do you really think "messing around with programs that make X unusable" is anything but a corner case? Do you really think normal people actually do this in the normal-case?

A lot of people play full-screen video games, and that's where most of my X problems have popped up. I don't consider misbehaving video games (or other full screen applications) to be THAT much of a corner case.

Encrypted home directories fix root good; they are quickly becoming the default, and on my system the reset button can (and is) disabled by BIOS, if I don't put the computer in a locked cabinet.

A lot of that sounds great, but I think it is very common for people to not have their computer in a locked cabinet. Also, are you saying that there is no button to power off your computer? Sometimes computers completely lock up...

I'm sorry, but this is fucking insane. First 8.10 introduced a regression bug that meant REISUB no longer worked in X, and now this. Hey, who needs troubleshooting or recovery key combos, right?! Ubuntu never crashes, so there. Yeah, right.

Oh, and don't forget the premature pulseaudio disaster; ever since Ubuntu 8.10, Firefox + Flash + pulseaudio has been a deadly combination. I still use Ubuntu (moving to Arch soon, I think), and I pkill firef at least two times a day, every day (on average).

I have a very strong feeling that Ubuntu is losing touch with reality -- no wonder, given how pathetically they tend to mishandle and fob off almost all bug reports.

It came from upstream, not the Ubuntu devs. Every distro that uses Xorg 1.6 will exhibit this behavior.

Thanks for the info, though that somehow makes things even more terrible. I'm relieved to find that one can restore the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace feature, but I strongly feel that that feature working should be the default, and disabling it should be optional. Even more so since many folks don't even touch /etc/X11/xorg.conf files anymore and have autodetection take care of everything.

I'm an Arch user, btw. I'd recommend you switch to Arch for other reasons

What are those reasons?

but I think it's a little silly to blame the Ubuntu guys for this.

It isn't, even given that it came from upstream. If your corporate headquarters tell you to jump out the window, do you do it?

I think the Ubuntu package maintainer patching Xorg in order to avoid some people adding one line to their xorg.conf would be pretty silly.

As for Arch, the wiki has a pretty good list of reasons why arch is awesome. Personally I like that I'm able to build a system that perfectly fits my needs from the ground up rather than trying to tear out packages from a general-purpose distribution like Ubuntu. I also like the package manager (pacman) more than apt, and ABS and AUR are very cool.

You know, I thought about doing the same. But I'm not sure if it's a good idea to make accommodation for such failings -- my current thinking goes more into the direction of this eventually pissing me off enough to switch to another distro where this problem hopefully won't exist (as it didn't in prior versions of Ubuntu).

I'm alsoactivelyconsideringOpenSolaris.
Not that I'd consider Flash a reason to switch your main OS; yet given that I use OpenBSD, on which new versions of Flash don't work, better compatibility with Flash and Linux apps is a big part of the reason to run any other OS besides OpenBSD, and maybe that other OS should be OpenSolaris instead of Linux.

Switching to a vterm and restarting gdm. (sudo invoke-rc.d gdm restart). Replace gdm with kdm if you use KDE or xdm if you use XFCE.

If your system is hosed and won't switch vterms and you can't ssh in to restart X, you can try force-killing X using Alt-SysRq-K.

If your system is really hosed, you should use the Alt-Sys-Rq-REISUB (press Alt-SysRq-R then Alt-SysRq-E etc). Doing this is much safer than jabbing the reset button because it gives processes a chance to stop cleanly (E) then makes the filesystems sync (SU) to ensure all changes are written to disk.

If you really love your C-A-B, you can always restore that functionality by disabling DontZap in xorg.conf

If I were to guess, one is SysV style and one is BSD style. Not sure which one. I think the non-init.d one is moving towards a unified service style ala Solaris, Windows, Red Hat...I could be way off here though.

This is nowhere near as big a deal as many people are making it out to be. This is just a relatively minor change to the default configuration. If you want to make it work the way it used to, change it in the config file.

With my laptop, the text is all garbled up for the virtual terminals. I wanted to restart X today to fix a mouse problem and I couldn't switch to a virtual term, couldn't ctrl-alt-backspace, and it took like 5 min for me to move my mouse over and logout.

guys/gals, i know this is annoying but is it that big a deal? this is why its opensource, if your distro does something you dont like you can change it.. if you want to see linux well supported there are some punches you will have to roll with, and sticking with a popular easy to use distro is key for adoption, we have to give people the impression that there is at least SOME consistency in linux desktops.

Completely? Didn't they change it so you had to repeat the ctrl-alt-backspace command before it killed X?

Disabling it completely is just... sad. Next they'll send over an Ubuntu nanny to comfort you if you ever feel scared in the super-scary linux world. Where you apparently have to have some sense of what the fuck you are doing instead of randomly bashing your keyboard...